for all those passionate throes until now, left unsung, about music

What song…

What song has you belting at the top of your lungs as you scrub the dishes or play air guitar with the sprayer or vacuum cleaner attachment?

At the curve in the road of a somewhat difficult week, I found myself singing The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Under the Bridge.” Sometimes, in life, there’s a time when lyrics ring so true for you it hurts. At least, it happens to me a lot. I catch myself saying, “Isn’t that true Layne?” Or, “That’s damn right, Eddie!”
As I dished out the Palmolive and scrubbed the coffee pot and cat food dish, Anthony Keidis took me to a time long ago, where I felt a similar melancholy.
I was nine and we were moving only one town away, but to me, my whole world was rocked. I had a small, tree-roofed hideout behind some apartments in Fox Ridge Apartments in Blacksburg, VA. I would often go there to write or think or just be. Someone had a radio playing in a nearby apartment and I closed my eyes…
“Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a partner. Sometimes I feel like my only friend is the city I live in, the city of angels, lonely as I am, together we cry…” It was then that I realized how much power music had over me.
The other night, hands submersed in dish soap bubbles, I truly appreciated my vocal talents for the first time in many years. A friend of mine had suggested “living fearlessly.” It didn’t have to have parameters. “Just try it.”
Singing aloud, from my soul that night, the cat as my only witness, I understood what he meant. Fearless.
“Sometimes I feel like my only friend is” music. But I know that’s not true. I am blessed to have many friends. Music often threads us together, and that is a double blessing.
Someday, my best friend for life, in dreamy male form, will probably climb over the black stems and staff and hand me a fermata. Someday.